


The Sound of Silence

by emmaziege



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Deaf Character, Explicit Language, Gift Fic, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, M/M, No Smut, Not Beta Read, Quest: But Other Than That How Did You Enjoy The Play? (The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt), References to Witcher 3 Quests, Supernatural Elements, Swearing, The Witcher Secret Santa 2020, Whump, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:16:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28491522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmaziege/pseuds/emmaziege
Summary: “I’m bleeding,” he told himself to say, lips moving and the air of his breath obliging. The words themselves seemed to him muffled and smothered, and he had to wonder if he’d said them at all. The argument that Geralt was having with the physician, though it looked to be a matter of raised voices at significant volume, came back to him only as muzzy impressions of sound with none of the specificity he expected. The only sound that seemed to cut through the feathers and straw stuffing his skull was a droning, high-pitched whine just at the edge of his perception.“I said I’m bleeding,” Jaskier tried again, hoping against hope that he was shouting now, and this time almost choking on the word and its implications. “And I still can’t fucking hear anything!”************When a dusty old ghost story takes a dangerous turn, Jaskier suffers a loss that could permanently alter life as he knows it: his hearing. But when all seems lost, he finds reassurance with Geralt. (The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt knowledge not at all necessary, but game fans might appreciate the quest reference!)
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 20
Kudos: 170
Collections: The Witcher Secret Santa 2020





	The Sound of Silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DrowningByDegrees](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningByDegrees/gifts).



Geralt had escalated from snarling his words to yelling at the healer, his mouth opening wide to show flashes of teeth in cooperation with a straining throat, gesticulating as if the point of his finger was a weapon in itself. Said physician was a wealthy and well-educated man held in high regard in Beauclair, but the witcher was no lady of the court with a wart wanting removal. Nor was he a lord that would have one of the more scandalous diseases treated discretely ere it become known to his wart-cursed lady wife. It seemed that the physician was beginning to appreciate the precarious distinction of having to give a poor diagnosis to a witcher. The man’s voluminous silken robes and the ear flaps of his tall woolen hat began to quiver, from equal parts indignation and burgeoning fear so far as Jaskier judged. It was there to be read even at a distance in the flush of his face, the angle of his chin and the growing whites of his eyes. His beringed hands flapped, half-raised in his defense, but his head shook as he spoke. Ordinarily, Jaskier was rather accomplished as a lip reader, but he was having difficulty making out the exact stammering words being shaped from beyond the shifting cover of Geralt’s broad back. It clearly wasn’t good news anyway.

Ordinarily, he would have appreciated the witcher’s enthusiasm in arguing with the healer on his own behalf. See? The great brooding White Wolf did care for him a little after all. That was worth knowing. But he was, in his present state, a bit shaken.

Something spattered on the back of Jaskier’s hand, a bead of lukewarm wetness breaking across the rise of one knuckle. He simultaneously glanced down and lifted his hand to investigate. He thought it was a teardrop at first, and would have well understood if that was the case. He wanted to blame the searing of smelling salts that still haunted his nostrils, but it would have been a lie. His eyes pricked with unspent sobs that he had thus far resolutely held at bay, and it would not have shocked him at all if one of them had finally escaped him to trail a rivulet down his face. It wasn’t a tear, for what difference it made, as the blotch on his skin was starkly red. A burst holly berry, or as viewed from farther away a torn poppy, his poetic mind supplied unbidden – or from an even greater distance, a cardinal newly introduced to the concept of window glass. He thumbed the red spot absently into a streak, then reached up to touch his ear with the tips of his fingers. ...Ah. A whole inkblot flock trickled slowly downwards from where they had crashed upon the peaks of his fingertips.

“I’m bleeding,” he told himself to say, lips moving and the air of his breath obliging. The words themselves seemed to him muffled and smothered, and he had to wonder if he’d said them at all. The argument that Geralt was having with the physician, though it looked to be a matter of raised voices at significant volume, came back to him only as muzzy impressions of sound with none of the specificity he expected. The only sound that seemed to cut through the feathers and straw stuffing his skull was a droning, high-pitched whine just at the edge of his perception.

“I said I’m _bleeding_ ,” Jaskier tried again, hoping against hope that he was shouting now, and this time almost choking on the word and its implications. “And I still can’t fucking hear anything!”

Both of the other men stopped in their quarrel, turning to look back at him. And somehow that instant was more terrifying than anything yet. The physician’s look was one of resigned and open pity. Geralt’s expression looked of heartbreak, more profound than any Jaskier had ever captured in verse or song. That was when Jaskier knew that his sudden deafness was beyond the scope of mere men. That was when Jaskier realized he may never hear another song in all his life, and that no melody he could sing now would resonate as mellifluously as it had before. His artistic impulse to compare himself to a broken bird was aptly done.

And then Jaskier did begin to cry, pushing his face into his hands, damn the bloodied fingers, shaking palms, and all.

************

It started, as befitted a reckless lover of the performing arts, with a haunted amphitheater. 

Geralt having completed a contract to slay a giant that styled itself in mockery of a knight (which was as aptly satirical a monster for Toussaint as ever a bard could compose), Jaskier had begged the witcher to indulge him as his escort for a bit of sightseeing. Every person of the artistic persuasion in Beauclair had heard of the ancient amphitheater south of the palace gardens. Built on the banks of the _Seidhe Llygad_ lake ages ago, it was an elven relic that had been restored with great theatrical ambitions in 1178. But upon its grand reopening, tragedy dashed those ambitions into the dirt as the leading lady in the play died under mysterious circumstances. The only persons more superstitious than sailors and old wives are thespians, and with the venue so dramatically death-touched, no performer of quality wanted to risk their lives for a summer matinee that could as easily be staged elsewhere. Beauclair soon abandoned the place to decay as intently as it had been renovated, and all that was left were ghost stories.

A bard with more passion to follow his heart than to maintain his self-preservation, particularly in the company of a dashing hero who routinely faced off with all manner of curses, thought the promise of an epic song that would easily become all the rage in Toussaint was well worth the risk of heebie-jeebies. He would hardly be the first or last artiste to get it in his head to see the infamous spot for himself, though legend insisted woe tidings to those who blah blah blah, etcetera. But he had not truly understood the risk involved.

When they came upon the elegant stone amphitheater where the most reliable gossips in Jaskier’s circles had told him to find it, and Geralt announced that something wasn’t right in that wary growl of his, Jaskier promised himself they could still afford themselves a quick look around and then be done. They had come all the way out to the middle of nowhere, they had to find something to have made the trip worthwhile. The cracked tiered seats and broken columns overgrown with weeds did not look quite ominous in the light of midday, so much as achingly sad. There was no sign of graffiti nor the debris of illicit parties, bottles or bonfires and the like, though one might rightly have expected to find some such. The only sound besides what they brought with them was the shiver of a firm breeze rattling the leaves. It was in Jaskier’s mind even then to play something on his lute as a tribute. He left his lute on his back though, deciding to take in the scene a bit before he considered what would be most fitting to play.

All seemed entirely mundane until Jaskier nearly stumbled over the body that reclined against a broken stone wall facing the central staging grounds. It was barely recognizable for what it was, clothing much weather-worn, her body moreso. “She’s years gone by now,” Geralt informed him as Jaskier’s yelp receded. A sealed bottle was fitted into the remains of her hand, and Geralt must have identified somewhat else with his witcher enhancements to go pawing around in the rest. “Not sure what caused her death.”

“Poor thing,” Jaskier waited for his heartbeat to even out again, observing from around Geralt’s side with a frown. “How do you know that’s what’s left there is even a – No, no, I’ve changed my mind. Please don’t tell me. ...I don’t suppose she’s conveniently left some identifying object that could be relayed to her next of kin?”

“A perfumed journal,” Geralt reported back, quite conveniently. Sensing no magic in it other than the tired whiff of bergamot, jasmine, and cedar, he thumbed through the half-ruined pages briefly before handing it back for Jaskier to see.

“The melodrama of it all,” Jaskier murmured as his eyes danced across the contents, squinting to make out the words spared the destruction of the elements. “Sweet Melitele. She was trying to reenact Elsa de Longpré's final performance,” his blue eyes had gone wide as he read.

“You say that as if I should know what it means.” Geralt was largely ignorant about matters of the arts, including those of theater.

Jaskier tore his gaze from the pages to look back up at him. “Elsa de Longpré was the actress that died giving the single performance put on after the amphitheater was restored, all those years ago. She was the queen of the stage in her day if the accounts are to be believed.” He glanced back down at the journal, turning back a page to confirm what he had read there. “This isn’t Elsa’s journal, obviously, far too new – but _this_ girl was studying as an actress at the Imperial Dramatic Academy and having a rough go of it. She thought she would be inspired if she performed the notorious monologue here, just as Elsa did. She wrote the words out on these pages. It’s become something of a morbid classic, some troupe or another puts it on every season.”

Sympathy echoed in his voice, the tone as sorry as it was sweet. It was so easy to fall in love with words, with music, with humanity’s highest forms of self-expression. So much harder to see that through to personal success. Jaskier remembered all too well what it was to have stale bread thrown at him in a tiny tavern at the end of the world.

“Hmm.” Geralt stood up from the pitiful remains. He took the weathered bottle of wine with him. _Vis la Crac_ , read the label, which had been turned just so to safeguard most of the ink.

“It’s part of the reenactment. Elsa drank wine after the monologue,” Jaskier supplied. “There were rumors her death was the result of poison, but it was never proven.”

Geralt opened the stopper and inhaled, thinking that perhaps poison was involved in this young woman’s death just the same. But no. “Only wine,” his heightened senses informed him.

Jaskier reached over and helped himself to the open bottle before Geralt could object. He looked up, casting his gaze about until he saw the other props the monologue ought to feature. “And there, the candles! She lit the candles in the sequence,” he decided as he spotted the tall, heavy candlesticks that still stood upright with stubs of candle in them. Jaskier sprang to his feet and went to recognize the first station of the series as he’d seen it played. Yes, of course! His lute could wait a while longer. This scenario rather required a bit of acting. “Geralt, come do the thing!”

Geralt hesitated and stood his ground. “Most ghost stories are bullshit invented to spook the naive because someone’s bored or stands to profit. But I don’t like this. A sensational death can make a restless spirit. Wouldn’t be surprised if the girl died that way.”

What did surprise him was Jaskier’s reply. Rather than begging off as he’d done with the discovery of the corpse, he said something else entirely. “Then we really need to do this, don’t we? If there is a restless spirit, either Elsa’s or the girl’s – I’m sorry, but I haven’t seen her name put down in here yet – isn’t this a waiting deathtrap for the next sorry soul that finds this place? Aren’t you supposed to protect people from exactly this sort of preternatural threat?”

Geralt perfunctorily scowled and looked away across the ruins for a moment as if every crumbled stone was suspect of harboring a threat. “No one’s hired me for this,” he reminded, but the argument didn’t even sound wholly convincing to his own ears. “And specters are dangerous.”

“Yes, yes, as is everything else that you face in a day and that I bravely witness for posterity,” Jaskier goaded well, either hand waving the open bottle and the journal at him in wide motions. “You want me to bounce a coin off of your lovely bum, or are you going to come help me do your job for you?”

Geralt finally looked back at Jaskier, those bright blue eyes pleading with him from across the distance. He reluctantly brought himself in closer, to have a look at the first candle that patiently awaited them. “It’s because she was a doomed performer, isn’t it?”

Jaskier’s lips shaped a grateful little smile, and he tipped his head a bit. “Even if there isn’t any ghost and the whole thing is a poetic farce… Here are the words, the props, and the perfect venue. I can’t really resist playing the part, can I? What a song it shall make!”

That this was possibly foolish arguably made it more rather than less endearing. Geralt turned his attention to the candle, and with a practiced gesture of his fingers, cast the sign of igni to light the wick.

Jaskier pointed out each candle in the order that they must be lit, then eagerly stepped to the center of the arena. He found himself filled with anticipation in spite of its silent decrepitude. The amphitheater was positively ancient, as he recalled, the restoration decades past only a makeover to pretty up the old bones. What elven royalty might have witnessed great works played out here in ages past? What storytellers of the _Aen Seidhe_ had embodied their most illustrious tales on this very soil, hundreds of years before the likes of the legendary Elsa de Longpré?

He struck a dramatic pose and spoke the words as they were marked in the journal, and in the silence of each breath between those words wished they might all of them be satisfied with his melodic oration. The monologue was, in itself, a tribute from a woman left behind to oversee the deaths of the men gone before her. Rather purple stuff, honestly, but that had been the prevailing taste of playwrights at the time it was written. “The day now dies. It collapses into itself, as does my soul... Darkness like a stifling vapor shall soon swallow me. No! Now I am at last ready to renew the memory of ghosts in my heart.

I shall light the candles.

Let the first flicker for the lad, a mere child, who was smitten and perished on the field of battle at high noon without a murmur.”

Wisely saying nothing of Jaskier’s mummery, Geralt moved across the staging ground to the next candle.

“Let now the second flicker for he who wished to fetch me a jewel from the bottom of the well, and never surfaced to see the light of this world again,” Jaskier nodded.

Geralt cast igni to light the second candle and moved towards the third.

“Let the third flicker for the husband – handsome as a statue, cold as a stone! – who left me alone and in darkness departed. Anonymously he died, in the woods, he perished.” If this line was perhaps slightly pointed and smug, as if intended especially for needling Geralt, Jaskier restrained himself before reaching the point of ad-libbing a classic.

Another candle came to burn.

“Let the fourth flicker for he who loved so beautifully, so heatedly delighted and in this fire was consumed.”

Again a fresh flame kindled, and Geralt stepped up to the last yet to be lit. He had taken up a small bottle in his free hand which had been secured somewhere on his person, and he poured the contents onto the bare silver blade before discarding the bottle to cast his sign.

“Let the fifth flicker for you, my beloved, my faithful companion, my hapless husband! Wracked by disease! You lie in the earth most shallowly of all.

All candles now flicker.

So lovely, so white.

Men, boys, husbands – mine, all! I love you to the last.

Now behold the wine. I drink it and with it sanctify your memory,” Jaskier brandished the wine, winking to Geralt in a merry conspiracy. He tipped it back against his lips and had a hearty swallow.

The air around them rippled, and their vision of the amphitheater seemed to swim. From the barren stands came a rushing wall of sound, built of full-throated cheers and applause such as hundreds of unseen spectators might make. The echoing around them suggested that the high stands and surrounding walls were whole enough to amplify such reverberations rather than collapsed in on themselves. The memory of thunderous praise answered the performance as if it had only been waiting all these years to resolve itself, a withholding of pent breath and clapping hands echoing to them from across centuries.

Jaskier gave a soft bark of a laugh at the triumphant ruckus, eyes flitting around them expectantly in that first moment, but seeing only Geralt. “We’ve done it,” he took from this reaction, and he grinned wide at Geralt before sweeping a self-satisfied bow.

“Jaskier!” Geralt yelled his name even as the bard-cum-thespian doubled over, already surging into motion with his blade rising for what he had seen materialize just beyond his companion.

Jaskier jerked around to face the inevitable as it barreled down on him. Her hair was long and dark, and Jaskier did not doubt that Elsa de Longpré had once stood a striking figure as an actress. The sea-green costume dress that she wore would have been the height of theatrical fashion a century past, the wide neckline granted demure elegance with lace accents, gauzy front drapery skirt and underbust ribbon matched with wide white ruffles at either elbow. But everything beautiful in and on her had gone to rot ages ago, twisted and elongated, dirtied, frayed, tattered and contorted. Her grey skin had shriveled to cling around exposed swaths of her yellowed skull and her nails had grown out into great gnarled claws. She had no legs or feet to carry her, nor did she seem to have any want of them. She flew through the air with unsettling speed, torn skirts flapping in her wake, her thrashing hands extended for Jaskier.

It wasn’t her hands that he had to fear most, though with them she orchestrated a great summoning of skeletons long buried in the elven crypt beneath the amphitheater to burst free of the dirt and rock to attack the mortal intruders. The witcher and bard would respectively realized that this was no common ghost they faced, but something worse and more rarified altogether. A specter’s moaning could unnerve a sturdy man. But the wail of the beann'shie, the lore said, drove even the strongest men to meet their deaths.

The wraith ignored the witcher and charged he who had dared to stand on her stage and speak her words, to play her part and think himself her equal, belittling her craft and her murder. Even as Geralt swung his sword to smash aside rust-brittle elven blades and crashed through the skeletons blocking his path, even as the wine bottle smashed apart on the ruptured stone below them and the lute gifted by an elven king thudded and twanged as the bard landed heavily, the beann'shie unhinged her jaw at a wrong angle and let forth a monstrous scream.

Jaskier felt the force of her wail push at the skin of his face, blowing back his tousled hair and snapping the edges of his doublet so that he closed his eyes and dropped the journal to bring up his arms defensively. The sound made his ears ache as never they had before, the reverberations both impossibly low and piercingly high, an unholy shriek ripping through the core of him. Then everything swam and throbbed, his limbs becoming too heavy and his thoughts too airy, but for the distinct impression that he was likely to be sick. His eyes fluttered open for a desperate moment, fighting against the pull of unconsciousness. He saw Geralt standing over him, silver sword flashing into the beann'shie with frenzied swings and a tortured expression to his features, the wraith jerking and seeping glowing green light under each blow.

Then Jaskier’s eyes shut, the trauma claiming its due. His last thoughts before resigning himself to an insensate heap were to wonder how it was all going to turn out and think what a pity it was that he was going to miss it.

************

The doctor’s handwriting, Jaskier bemoaned, was atrocious. Yet it had served well enough for the man to eventually convey to him the state of his circumstances, once he was calm enough to read at all. It was possible, the fellow explained in much less flustered and ruddy exposition than he had provided Geralt, that some of his hearing may recover itself in time. Then again, it may not. Maladies of the ears were difficult to predict. The elderly that found themselves in such a way often succumbed to it quietly or with toothless complaints, old enough that they had no interest in learning a whole new way in which to operate and being largely at the end of their usefulness. Children had more success in getting along, if they were in a family that was willing to learn how to communicate the essentials non-verbally, but their lives rarely expanded beyond their immediate relations. Some orders of monks even gesticulated with their hands at one another rather than speaking, in accordance with their religious vows to remain silent, and such being the case would accept a number of deaf men into their ranks. There were colleagues that were supposedly more knowledgeable in regards to the workings of the ear in Oxenfurt, if Jaskier wanted to go to the trouble of investigating the subject of his physical limitations further. But their illustrious services would not come cheaply, nor was there any point in the urgent haste with which the young sir seemed to expect his hearing to be remedied, the man insisted.

“What about magic?” Jaskier blurted at the grim prognosis, unintentionally loud enough that the other man flinched. He thought of Yennefer, and how she had healed him following the djinn’s attack after all, even if she’d threatened him with the most intimate bodily harm shortly thereafter.

The physician made what could only appropriately be categorized as a harumph where he leaned over the parchment again, a sneering full-body huff to behold even without the audible punctuation. _Chaos upon the body is foul and faulty! A sorcerer is as likely to grant you the ears of an ass as they are to aid you in hearing once more. Whereas I shall provide you with a practical tincture that will ease your pains and help the healing if you have the gold._ Geralt, who had agreed to loom over Jaskier’s shoulder beyond the physician’s writing desk after their initial altercation, silently pushed the gold at him before Jaskier could so much as think to gather up his coin purse.

After steering them to the nearest inn and securing them a room, Geralt clumsily drew Jaskier’s attention to something that he was saying, turning the shock-addled bard around to face him by his shoulders. Jaskier had frequently enjoyed the surreptitious privilege of reading Geralt’s lips. The wide curve of the lower lip betrayed that stern, steely face with seeming softness. The cupid’s bow that made the upper lip was a downright provocative flirt. Together they pouted so prettily at rest that even Geralt’s greatest frowns and sneers couldn’t make them less attractive, no matter the hurtful words that might come from between them. Yet that low, raspy rumble of a voice came from so far away now, as if Jaskier was submerged deep underwater. He strained to focus, and it gained him the vaguest impression of the dampened auditory effect that must be Geralt’s words trying to find their way to him through the seeming fathoms of pressure and the tinny itch of a high note that never quite left his inner ear, but it was futile trying to make anything sensible from it. Whatever pleasure he’d got out of watching Geralt’s mouth at work before, it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Geralt frowned, and tried again, mouthing his words more slowly and intently this time. _I said, I’ll write to Triss Merigold. Can you understand me?_

“Triss Merigold,” Jaskier echoed back to him, dismayed at the lack of definition to even his own speech. He couldn’t hear his words as he spoke them, something he had always taken so effortlessly for granted. Would the neatly enunciated syllables of his own words dull day by day without his even knowing? “You’re saying we should reach out to your sorceress friend and see if her magic can fix me.” It went without saying that the other sorceress of immediate consideration, Yennefer of Vengerberg, was not currently on offer. Geralt’s on-again, off-again love affair with her was, at present, decidedly off. Again.

Geralt nodded at him, still grasping Jaskier’s shoulders. His features were strained with concern, and if Jaskier could read his pained amber eyes as well as his lips, no small measure of guilt. At another time, he could imagine crowing in glory or feeling his heart swell right out of his chest to see the witcher so plainly wracked with emotion in regards to his welfare. But it was as during his ear examination. He was wobbling in a place between numbness and hysterics from what had happened, and how quickly. And what it all meant, if he, a man that lived and breathed to perform music that stirred the soul… Who was he now, if Jaskier the renowned bard was not fit to be a bard at all?

Geralt was trying to say something else to him, evidenced by the jostle of his shoulders as Jaskier swallowed hard, blinked, and looked away. His abruptly restless fingers flexed, rubbing his strummer’s callouses together self-consciously. Perhaps he could still pluck a fine tune by feel, if not by following the notes on the open air. “My lute, Geralt,” Jaskier lifted his voice from his tight throat to say urgently, ignoring whatever Geralt was on about this once. “Was it damaged back there? Along with...everything else? What did you do with it? It’s not broken, is it?”

Geralt went on with whatever it was he wanted to communicate, hands gripping harder, the shadow of his voice issued from a world away brushing by at a distance they could not nope to cross. How damned ironic, that the one time Jaskier didn’t want him to speak, Geralt couldn’t seem to help himself from prattling on.

“How many times does this need saying?! I can’t fucking hear you, Geralt. I can’t hear anything. As it happens, I’m stone deaf! My life’s purpose snatched away from me forever, because… Because I was too stupid to leave a dramatic ghost story well enough alone, or you were too slow with your stupid bulky hero armor and your stupid big hero sword!” Now that Geralt had stopped manhandling him, motionless and completely stunned where he stood, Jaskier looked back up at him. Tears were streaking down his cheeks freely by this time. He realized he had been shouting, and part of him was glad that he had been shouting. The image of the white-haired witcher was blurry through the welling of fresh tears, but it did give him a tiny, miserable bit of satisfaction to more or less see Geralt shaken, as he felt shaken. “I don’t know if I can compose like this. I won’t be able to hear what I’m playing, what I’m singing. If my lute is smashed, I… What am I to do, Geralt?”

Slowly, as if Jaskier were an assemblage of loose pieces that might fall apart if they were not held, Geralt’s hands released themselves from his shoulders. Geralt turned. He walked away.

“Of course,” Jaskier spoke with aching softness this time, fresh anguish trembling through him as if he were one raw nerve all over. He did not want to believe it, would never have truly expected it, for however coarse and steely a show the other put on. But there it was. Geralt was leaving him. “You’ll be needing a new hype man, won’t you? Every tone-deaf bumpkin on the Continent can hum _Toss a Coin_ , but to perform it well through each verse–”

But no sooner had Geralt walked away from him than he turned around to come back again, and Jaskier could see why. He would have known it instantly as it was pushed into his hands, had he been struck blind rather than deaf. The thick, rounded bottom, the most incredible neck, like a sexy goose, dark-clad and nicely pegged… _Filavandrel aén Fidháil_ ’s lute. His lute. His shaking hands clutched it close to his front, exploring the length and breadth of it. There was a starburst crack in the body where it had hit the ground and a few minor scratches. Yet it was otherwise intact, and every string was still taut. All it needed was a little love from a competent luthier, and it would sing as sweetly as ever.

“Oh, you poor marred beauty.” Jaskier exhaled a sob of relief, sagging where he hugged the lute to him with all the naked care and affection as a peasant child had for their only toy. “There there. You’ll be fine again. Wait and see.”

Jaskier was about to start collecting himself, to tug the hem of his filthy doublet right and try to resemble a man with a modicum of pride again, but he was interrupted by the sudden closeness of Geralt. Before he could stammer out anything in response, the witcher’s thick arms were pushing their way around him, lute and all, to bring him in for a hug that was at once fiercely protective but surprisingly gentle. Geralt could well have forced the air out of his lungs by crushing Jaskier against the solid breastplate of his armor, and Jaskier might even have found it stimulating under other circumstances, but… Right now, what he needed was to be held dearly, when it looked as though a part of him would never be quite what it was again. And here he was, being held, possibly even dearly. By the dread loner Geralt of Rivia, if you could believe it.

 _I’m sorry_ , Geralt’s lips told Jaskier’s cheek, just beside his ear. Not that Jaskier could make it out, or anything else that was murmured at such close proximity, for that matter. But that was all right.

************

Life without hearing after having had the ability from birth came with an enormous amount of stress and frustration in Jaskier’s experience. He spent untold energy attempting to follow everything that happened around him, to be acknowledged and engaged with the common hearing folk as an equal. His mood, it must be said, turned understandably sour on a number of aborted attempts to get someone to address him properly and hear him out in kind. Even when one could speak and read lips, it turned out that many conversational partners were rather thoughtless in how they positioned themselves or raised their voices as if the brilliant cure to professed deafness was to shout but slowly. Jaskier purchased a slate and chalk straightaway, but this was hardly a complete solution. Most people, unless they were of the wealthy or learned disciplines specifically, couldn’t read. You try picto-miming ‘how much to stable this horse for three days,’ or ‘I would be glad to drown in the lakes of your sapphire eyes, fair barmaid.’ And that was on the days that it wasn’t raining. As a result of it being considerably more difficult and less rewarding to engage with people, though Jaskier tried to hide it with easy shrugs and brave smiles for Geralt’s benefit, was a much quieter, peevish, and more withdrawn bard than Jaskier had been when first they arrived in Beauclair.

For all that Jaskier lamented what he had lost, there were also unexpected benefits to his forced quietude. He had a perfect excuse to ignore whatever he would prefer not to hear, for one. After having his lute repaired, he threw himself into learning to understand the physical experience of playing in a more profound way than before. He may not be able to hear as he went, but he already had his fingering memorized as far as to be pure muscle memory, and he began to appreciate that he could compose by feeling out the vibrations through a song in accordance with the notes he knew them to be. Geralt, who had promised to get him to Oxenfurt for further study and to meet with Triss Merigold to investigate a magical cure, took a kinder way with him as well. It was at times irritating to be handled so gently for the worst reasons. There were petty quarrels and long silences enough as a result. But Jaskier could not deny that when he rested his head on Geralt’s thigh so that the other could better apply the medicinal drops for him, it was a comfort such as he never could have hoped for previously.

It was nearly two weeks after the beann'shie encounter that something exceptional happened. When he would recount the event later, Jaskier would experiment with a number of entertainingly fantastical reasons to explain what came to pass. But if the truth were to be told – by a dour witcher upon hearing an especially egregious variation of the story, perhaps – Jaskier had no real idea as to the how or why of it. Nor did the most expensive specialists in Oxenfurt, nor Triss Merigold... Or Roach, for that matter, although she was decidedly present at the time. It would ever remain one of those elusive little mysteries.

Not far off a main road leading into Oxenfurt, Geralt had taken Roach to the river to drink while Jaskier refilled their water skins some few steps away. Jaskier’s head had felt funny all morning, something about the pressure in his ears, but nothing especially painful or concerning. So he’d gone about as usual, thinking no more of it. Until he was stopping up the full skins and rising from where he had knelt, and what he perceived nearly threw him right off of his balance and head-first into the river.

“Might be a while in Oxenfurt, girl. It’s our best chance at making him right again.”

Jaskier sloshed in the water as he staggered a step, turning around to stare at Geralt where the witcher carried on chatting with Roach. Jaskier hadn’t been watching to read his lips, or he might have thought it was only his frequently overactive imagination at work on him. The sound of Geralt’s voice came through a bit funny, but… It was Geralt’s voice. He could hear Geralt speaking to Roach. The sound of the running water and the faint squish of the muddy embankment beneath his heels were so gently quiet that he couldn’t quite pick them up, but he could _hear Geralt’s voice_ and he would have exclaimed at the top of his lungs if he wasn’t scared he might ruin the fragile miracle of what he was hearing after having gone without for so long.

“I owe him,” Geralt continued, watching Roach where she was bent to the surface of the water. He had stopped looking to see if Jaskier was staring whenever he had a mind to say something to someone else. “To make up for the damage the beann'shie has done. But it’s more than that. After all this time… You understand, don’t you?”

Jaskier fitted his hand into the glove of Geralt’s gauntlet for a bold squeeze. Geralt’s head snapped up to look at the other man quizzically. Jaskier’s heart was racing with pure joy, and his smile was the brightest that the witcher had ever seen it. “Oh, yes, you owe me everything. After all this time, Geralt… I understand. But I don’t mind if you’d like to say so out loud.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you've played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and think that the haunted amphitheater scenario sounds familiar, you're absolutely right! I shamelessly borrowed the quest called "But Other Than That, How Did You Enjoy the Play?" from the Blood and Wine game expansion and reimagined it as involving the Netflix Geralt and Jaskier in this interpretation.
> 
> Please note that there are now and historically have been deaf individuals - yes, including talented musicians! - living full and prosperous lives without the ability to hear. The depiction of one fictional person's fictional struggle with losing an ability they have come to take for granted is not to suggest otherwise or to imply that this is an accurate portrayal of what it is like to experience temporary deafness.
> 
> Written as a The Witcher Secret Santa 2020 gift for DrowningByDegrees, who requested H/C and/or fluffiness. I hope you enjoy it, DBD! <3


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